Introduction by John Harwood

WINNER OF THE AUREALIS AWARD

Over 132,000 words of the best fiction by best-selling writer Sean Williams.

• A Map of the Mines of Barnath
• Ghosts of the Fall
• The Soap Bubble
• The Magic Dirt Experiment
• Night of the Dolls (with Shane Dix)
• Atrax (with Simon Brown)
• End of the World
• The Seventh Letter
• Evermore
• The Butterfly Merchant
• Reluctant Misty & the House on Burden Street
• The Girl-Thing
• Entre les Beaux Morts en Vie (Among the Beautiful Living Dead)
• Passing the Bone
• A View Before Dying
• Team Sharon
• White Christmas
• Masque of Agamemnon (with Simon Brown)

Collects 33 stories of horror and dark fantasy that acknowledge the undead as ineradicable members of Australian society. The best selections twine the vampire incursion with Australian history, as in Shona Husk’s “Mutiny on the Scarborough,” whose vampire narrator reveals himself to have been one of the earliest convicts transported Down Under. Angela Slatter’s “Sun Falls,” about a luckless vamp dependent upon his smart-aleck human slave, and “The Tide,” a multi-authored story that charts vampires’ rise from second-class citizen to the nation’s ruling elite, mix horror with humor.

The stories

• “The Tide”, Martin Livings and friends*
• “Mutiny on the Scarborough”, Shona Husk
• “Sun Falls”, Angela Slatter
• “Such is Life”, Jeremy Sadler
• “Apologetoi”, Chris Lawson
• “Punishment of the Sun”, Alan Baxter
• “Red Delicious”, Felicity Dowker
• “Just a Matter of Economics”, Yvonne Eve Walus
• “Quarantine”, Patty Jansen
• “Out of the Grave”, Amanda Pillar
• “Desert Blood”, Marty Young
• “Thin Air”, Simon Brown
• “Kissed by the Sun”, Jodi Cleghorn
• “Bats”, Jane Routley
• “Black Heart”, Joanna Fay
• “Renfield’s Wife”, Damon Cavalchini
• “Listening to Tracy”, Jen White
• “Breaking the Drought”, Jay Caselberg
• “Children of the Cane”, Jason Nahrung
• “The Sea at Night”, Joanne Anderton
• “Sky in the Morning”, Sonia Marcon
• “Taking it for the Team”, Tracie McBride
• “All that Glisters”, Pete Kempshall
• “The Rider”, Martin Livings
• “Vitality”, George Ivanoff
• “Coming Home”, Kathryn Hore
• “The Little Red Man”, Ray Gates
• “Deathborn Light”, Helen Stubbs
• “The Life Stealer”, Donna Maree Hanson
• “Behind the Black Mask”, Jacob Edwards
• “Interview with the Jiangshi”, Anne Mok
• “White and Red in the Black”, Lisa L Hannett
• “Lady Yang’s Lament”, Penelope Love

*Carol Ryles, Lezli Robyn, Kaaron Warren, Patty Jansen, Alan Baxter, Devin Jeythurai, Felicity Dowker, Andrew J McKiernan, Gillian Pollack, Chuck McKenzie

* Nobody’s Fool
* Shatterwrack at Breaklight
* The Man Who Walks Away Behind the Eyes
* The Robot is Running Away fron the Trees
* The Man Who Lost Red
* The Only Bird in Her Name
* The Last Elephant
* Spinners
* A Deadly Edge Their Red Beaks Pass Along
* Privateer’s Moon
* Time of the Star
* Coyote Struck by Lightning

Terry Dowling has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, and “Australia’s premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows. In a similar vein, The Year’s Best Fantasy 4 recently said that Dowling is a “master craftsman” and “one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy”. Locus regards his first book, Rynosseros, as placing him among “the masters of the field”.

Includes an afterword by Robin Pen and an introduction by Sean Williams and Simon Brown.

Second edition of sold out 1999 collection.

# Foreword: Van Ikin
# “The Lady of Situations”
# “Amendment”
# “Never Seen by Waking Eyes”
# “A Single Shadow”
# “Transit”
# “Double Action”
# “Founding Fathers”
# “Salvation”
# “The Godfather Paradox”
# “A Sort of Walking Miracle”
# “The Vision of a Vanished Good”
# “Bestseller”
# “From Whom All Blessings Flow”

In the second volume of this award-winning series, editors Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene have compiled an impressive list of fantastic stories first published in 2011, from New Zealand’s and Australia’s finest writers. Includes Angela Slatter’s British Fantasy Award-winning story “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter”.

The 32 stories selected are

• Peter M Ball “Briar Day” (Moonlight Tuber)
• Lee Battersby “Europe After The Rain” (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Deborah Biancotti “Bad Power” (Bad Power, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Jenny Blackford “The Head in the Goatskin Bag” (Kaleidotrope)
• Simon Brown “Thin Air” (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• David Conyers and David Kernot “Winds Of Nzambi” (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Stephen Dedman “More Matter, Less Art” (Midnight Echo #6, AHWA)
• Sara Douglass & Angela Slatter “The Hall of Lost Footsteps” (The Hall of Lost Footsteps, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Felicity Dowker “Berries & Incense” (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Terry Dowling “Dark Me, Night You” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Jason Fischer “Hunting Rufus” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Christopher Green “Letters Of Love From The Once And Newly Dead” (Midnight Echo #5, AHWA)
• Paul Haines “The Past Is A Bridge Best Left Burnt” (The Last Days of Kali Yuga, Brimstone Press)
• Lisa L Hannett “Forever, Miss Tapekwa County” (Bluegrass Symphony, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Richard Harland “At The Top Of The Stairs” (Shadows and Tall Trees #2, Undertow Publications)
• John Harwood “Face To Face” (Ghosts by Gaslight, HarperCollins)
• Pete Kempshall “Someone Else To Play With” (Beauty Has Her Way, Dark Quest Books)
• Jo Langdon “Heaven” (After the Rain, Fablecroft Press)
• Maxine McArthur “The Soul of the Machine” (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Ian McHugh “The Wishwriter’s Wife” (Daily Science Fiction)
• Andrew J McKiernan “Love Death” (Aurealis #45, Chimaera Publications)
• Kirstyn McDermott “Frostbitten” (More Scary Kisses, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Margaret Mahy “Wolf Night” (The Wilful Eye – Tales From the Tower #1, Allen & Unwin)
• Anne Mok “Interview with the Jiangshi” (Dead Red Heart, Ticonderoga Publications)
• Jason Nahrung “Wraiths” (Winds of Change, CSFG)
• Anthony Panegyres “Reading Coffee” (Overland, OL Society)
• Tansy Rayner Roberts “The Patrician” (Love and Romanpunk, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Angela Rega “Love In the Atacama or the Poetry of Fleas” (Crossed Genres, CGP)
• Angela Slatter “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” (A Book of Horrors, Jo Fletcher Books)
• Lucy Sussex “Thief of Lives” (Thief of Lies, Twelfth Planet Press)
• Kyla Ward “The Kite” (The Land of Bad Dreams, P’rea Press)
• Kaaron Warren “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (Blood and Other Cravings, Tor)